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Full-Text Articles in Law

Landmark Ruling On Whaling From The International Court Of Justice, Mark P. Simmonds Dec 2014

Landmark Ruling On Whaling From The International Court Of Justice, Mark P. Simmonds

Mark P. Simmonds, OBE

On 31 March 2014, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Japan’s whaling activities in Antarctica did not comply with Article VIII of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW), which permits whaling for scientific purposes. Copious and confusing media commentary followed the decision. This included seemingly conflicting reports from within Japan, which initially indicated whole-hearted compliance with the ruling, which required this whaling to cease, but later suggested that implementation by Japan might be limited to a brief halt followed by a launch of a new Antarctic ‘research’ programme including lethal take.


Transdisciplinary Conflict Of Laws Foreword: Cavers's Double Legacy, Karen Knop, Ralf Michaels, Annelise Riles Dec 2014

Transdisciplinary Conflict Of Laws Foreword: Cavers's Double Legacy, Karen Knop, Ralf Michaels, Annelise Riles

Annelise Riles

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Models And Documents: Artefacts Of International Legal Knowledge, Annelise Riles Dec 2014

Models And Documents: Artefacts Of International Legal Knowledge, Annelise Riles

Annelise Riles

This article draws upon one year of ethnographic research at United Nations conferences to challenge some common academic assumptions about what it means to "do" international law. The article compares the work of academic international lawyers - founded in making models of an international system - to the work of practitioners - exemplified by the work of making documents, and demonstrates the particular, peculiar nature of each kind of knowledge, from the point of view of the observer. This leads to a set of conclusions concerning how an academic study of international law influenced by an appreciation of the particularity …


The View From The International Plane: Perspective And Scale In The Architecture Of Colonial International Law, Annelise Riles Dec 2014

The View From The International Plane: Perspective And Scale In The Architecture Of Colonial International Law, Annelise Riles

Annelise Riles

No abstract provided.


Is New Governance The Ideal Architecture For Global Financial Regulation?, Annelise Riles Dec 2014

Is New Governance The Ideal Architecture For Global Financial Regulation?, Annelise Riles

Annelise Riles

A central challenge for international financial regulatory systems today is how to manage the impact of global systemically important financial institutions (G-SIFIs) on the global economy, given the interconnected and pluralistic nature of regulatory regimes. This paper focuses on the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and proposes a new research agenda for the FSB’s emerging regulatory forms. In particular, it examines the regulatory architecture of the New Governance (NG), a variety of approaches that are supposed to be more reflexive, collaborative, and experimental than traditional forms of governance. A preliminary conclusion is that NG tools may be effective in resolving some …


Introducing Discipline: Anthropology And Human Rights Administrations, Iris Jean-Klein, Annelise Riles Dec 2014

Introducing Discipline: Anthropology And Human Rights Administrations, Iris Jean-Klein, Annelise Riles

Annelise Riles

Anthropologists engage human rights administrations with an implicit promise that our discipline has something unique to offer. The articles in this special issue turn questions about relevance and care so often heard in the context of debates about human rights outside in. They focus not on how anthropology can contribute to human rights activities, but on what anthropological encounters with human rights contribute to the development of our discipline. They ask, how exactly do we render the subject relevant to anthropology? Reflecting on some ways anthropologists in this field have dispensed care for their subjects, the authors highlight two modalities …


Infinity Within The Brackets, Annelise Riles Dec 2014

Infinity Within The Brackets, Annelise Riles

Annelise Riles

The ethnographic subjects of this article are UN-sponsored international conferences and their legal documents. Drawing upon fieldwork among Fiji delegates at these conferences, in this article I demonstrate the centrality of matters of form, as distinct from questions of “meaning,” in the negotiation of international agreements. A parallel usage of documents and of mats among Fijian negotiators provides a heuristic device for exploring questions of pattern and scale in the aesthetics of negotiation.


Pax Arabica?: Provisional Sovereignty And Intervention In The Arab Uprisings, Asli Bâli, Aziz Rana Dec 2014

Pax Arabica?: Provisional Sovereignty And Intervention In The Arab Uprisings, Asli Bâli, Aziz Rana

Aziz Rana

No abstract provided.


International Law And The Use Of Force: America’S Response To September 11, Muna Ndulo Dec 2014

International Law And The Use Of Force: America’S Response To September 11, Muna Ndulo

Muna B Ndulo

No abstract provided.


International Law: A South African Perspective, By John Dugard [Book Review], Muna Ndulo Dec 2014

International Law: A South African Perspective, By John Dugard [Book Review], Muna Ndulo

Muna B Ndulo

No abstract provided.


The United Nations Responses To The Sexual Abuse And Exploitation Of Women And Girls By Peacekeepers During Peacekeeping Missions, Muna Ndulo Dec 2014

The United Nations Responses To The Sexual Abuse And Exploitation Of Women And Girls By Peacekeepers During Peacekeeping Missions, Muna Ndulo

Muna B Ndulo

No abstract provided.


African Customary Law, Customs, And Women's Rights, Muna Ndulo Dec 2014

African Customary Law, Customs, And Women's Rights, Muna Ndulo

Muna B Ndulo

The sources of law in most African countries are customary law, the common law and legislation both colonial and post-independence. In a typical African country, the great majority of the people conduct their personal activities in accordance with and subject to customary law. Customary law has great impact in the area of personal law in regard to matters such as marriage, inheritance and traditional authority, and because it developed in an era dominated by patriarchy some of its norms conflict with human rights norms guaranteeing equality between men and women. While recognizing the role of legislation in reform, it is …


United Nations Peacekeeping Operations And Security And Reconstruction, Muna Ndulo Dec 2014

United Nations Peacekeeping Operations And Security And Reconstruction, Muna Ndulo

Muna B Ndulo

Several studies show that despite recent increases in the number of minor conflicts, long-term trends suggest that international and civil wars are declining. Analyzing the causes of the improvement in global security since 1990, the 2006 Human Security Report argues that the United Nations played a critically important role in spearheading a huge upsurge of international conflict prevention, peacekeeping and peacebuilding activities. Although the number of wars has decreased, far too many remain — and there are still several places of instability around the globe that could easily turn into conflict areas. In August 2000, a famous UN report, the …


Targeting Co-Belligerents, Jens David Ohlin Dec 2014

Targeting Co-Belligerents, Jens David Ohlin

Jens David Ohlin

One of the central controversies of the targeted killing debate is the question of who can be targeted for a summary killing. The following chapter employs a novel normative framework: how to link an individual terrorist with a non-state group that threatens a nation-state. Six linking principles are catalogued and analyzed, including direct participation, co-belligerency, membership, control, complicity and conspiracy. The analysis produces counter-intuitive results, especially for civil libertarians who usually eschew status principles in favor of conduct principles. The concept of membership, a status concept central to international humanitarian law, is ideally suited to situations, like targeted killings, that …


Targeting And The Concept Of Intent, Jens David Ohlin Dec 2014

Targeting And The Concept Of Intent, Jens David Ohlin

Jens David Ohlin

International law generally prohibits military forces from intentionally targeting civilians; this is the principle of distinction. In contrast, unintended collateral damage is permissible unless the anticipated civilian deaths outweigh the expected military advantage of the strike; this is the principle of proportionality. These cardinal targeting rules of international humanitarian law are generally assumed by military lawyers to be relatively well settled. However, recent international tribunals applying this law in a string of little-noticed decisions have completely upended this understanding. Armed with criminal law principles from their own domestic systems, often civil law jurisdictions, prosecutors, judges and even scholars have progressively …


Applying The Death Penalty To Crimes Of Genocide, Jens David Ohlin Dec 2014

Applying The Death Penalty To Crimes Of Genocide, Jens David Ohlin

Jens David Ohlin

No abstract provided.


Joint Intentions To Commit International Crimes, Jens David Ohlin Dec 2014

Joint Intentions To Commit International Crimes, Jens David Ohlin

Jens David Ohlin

The following article is an attempt to provide a coherent theory that international tribunals may use to ground the imposition of vicarious liability for collective crimes. Currently, the case law and the literature is focused on a debate between the Joint Criminal Enterprise (JCE) doctrine applied by the ICTY and the co-perpetration doctrine applied by the ICC, which defines co-perpetrators as those who have joint control over the collective crime. The latter doctrine, influenced by German criminal law theory, has recently won many converts, both in The Hague and in the Academy, because it allegedly avoids many of the pitfalls …


Searching For The Hinterman: In Praise Of Subjective Theories Of Imputation, Jens David Ohlin Dec 2014

Searching For The Hinterman: In Praise Of Subjective Theories Of Imputation, Jens David Ohlin

Jens David Ohlin

How should international courts distinguish between principals and accessories? The ICC answered this question with Roxin’s Control Theory of Perpetration; defendants should be convicted as principals if they control the crime individually, jointly with a co-perpetrator, indirectly via an organized apparatus of power, or as indirect co-perpetrators (via a combination of the previous doctrines). As the ICC adopted the control requirement, however, some of its decisions have allowed lower mental states such as recklessness or dolus eventualis to meet the standard for principal perpetration under the Control Theory. Other decisions have asserted that intent or knowledge is required though their …


Second-Order Linking Principles: Combining Vertical And Horizontal Modes Of Liability, Jens David Ohlin Dec 2014

Second-Order Linking Principles: Combining Vertical And Horizontal Modes Of Liability, Jens David Ohlin

Jens David Ohlin

Both the ICTY and the ICC have struggled to combine vertical and horizontal modes of liability. At the ICTY, the question has primarily arisen within the context of ‘leadership-level’ JCEs and how to express their relationship with the Relevant Physical Perpetrators of the crimes. The ICC addressed the is-sue by combining indirect perpetration with co-perpetration to form a new mode of liability known as indirect co-perpetration. The following article argues that these novel combinations — vertical and horizontal modes of liability — cannot be simply asserted; they must be defended at the level of criminal law theory. Unfortunately, courts that …


Joint Criminal Confusion, Jens David Ohlin Dec 2014

Joint Criminal Confusion, Jens David Ohlin

Jens David Ohlin

Article 25 on individual criminal responsibility has generated more conflicting interpretations than any other provision in the Rome Statute. Part of the problem is that it is impossible to construct a coherent and nonredundant interpretation of Article 25(3)(d) on group complicity. Because of unfortunate drafting, both the required contribution and the required mental element are impossible to discern from the inscrutable language. As a result, it is nearly impossible to devise a holistic interpretation of Article 25(3)(d) that fits together with the rest of Article 25 and Article 30 on mental elements. One possible solution is to repair Article 25 …


Assessing The Control-Theory, Jens David Ohlin, Elies Van Sliedregt, Thomas Weigend Dec 2014

Assessing The Control-Theory, Jens David Ohlin, Elies Van Sliedregt, Thomas Weigend

Jens David Ohlin

As the first cases before the ICC proceed to the Appeals Chamber, the judges ought to critically evaluate the merits and demerits of the control-theory of perpetratorship and its related doctrines. The request for a possible re-characterization of the form of responsibility in the case of Katanga and the recent acquittal of Ngudjolo can be taken as indications that the control-theory, is problematic as a theory of liability. The authors, in a spirit of constructive criticism, invite the ICC Appeals Chamber to take this unique opportunity to reconsider or improve the control-theory as developed by the Pre-Trial Chambers in the …


The Torture Lawyers, Jens David Ohlin Dec 2014

The Torture Lawyers, Jens David Ohlin

Jens David Ohlin

One of the longest shadows cast by the Bush Administration’s War on Terror involves the fate of the torture lawyers who authored or signed memoranda regarding torture or enhanced interrogation techniques against detainees. Should they face professional sanction or even prosecution for their involvement? The following Article suggests that their fate implicates some of the deepest questions of criminal law theory and that resolution of the debate requires a fundamental reorientation of the most important areas of justifications and excuses. First, the debate about torture has been overly focused on justifications for torture. This can be explained in part by …


Reclaiming Fundamental Principles Of Criminal Law In The Darfur Case, George P. Fletcher, Jens David Ohlin Dec 2014

Reclaiming Fundamental Principles Of Criminal Law In The Darfur Case, George P. Fletcher, Jens David Ohlin

Jens David Ohlin

According to the authors, the Report of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Darfur and the Security Council referral of the situation in Darfur to the International Criminal Court (ICC) bring to light two serious deficiencies of the ICC Statute and, more generally, international criminal law: (i) the systematic ambiguity between collective responsibility (i.e. the responsibility of the whole state) and criminal liability of individuals, on which current international criminal law is grounded, and (ii) the failure of the ICC Statute fully to comply with the principle of legality. The first deficiency is illustrated by highlighting the notions of genocide …


Towards A Unique Theory Of International Criminal Sentencing, Jens David Ohlin Dec 2014

Towards A Unique Theory Of International Criminal Sentencing, Jens David Ohlin

Jens David Ohlin

International criminal law currently lacks a robust procedure for sentencing convicted defendants. Legal scholars have already critiqued the sentencing procedures at the ad hoc tribunals, and the Rome Statute does little more than refer to the gravity of the offense and the individual circumstances of the criminal. No procedures are in place to guide judges in exercising their discretion in a matter that is arguably the most central aspect of international criminal law - punishment. This paper argues that the deficiency of sentencing procedures stems from a more fundamental theoretical deficiency - the lack of a unique theory of punishment …


International Law And Prosecutorial Discretion, Jens David Ohlin Dec 2014

International Law And Prosecutorial Discretion, Jens David Ohlin

Jens David Ohlin

No abstract provided.


The Bounds Of Necessity, Jens David Ohlin Dec 2014

The Bounds Of Necessity, Jens David Ohlin

Jens David Ohlin

The current controversy surrounding the legality of torture can only be understood through an analysis of the distinction between justified necessity and excused necessity. Although there may be strong prudential reasons for international criminal courts to declare torture unlawful under any circumstance, this would not necessarily prevent a court from recognizing that an excuse may apply. However, the hallmark of the necessity excuse should not be understood, as it is in German law, as an exception that only applies when a defendant breaks the law to save someone close to him. Rather, the basic principle of the excuse ought to …


The Co-Perpetrator Model Of Joint Criminal Enterprise, Jens David Ohlin Dec 2014

The Co-Perpetrator Model Of Joint Criminal Enterprise, Jens David Ohlin

Jens David Ohlin

No abstract provided.


The Duty To Capture, Jens David Ohlin Dec 2014

The Duty To Capture, Jens David Ohlin

Jens David Ohlin

The duty to capture stands at the fault line between competing legal regimes that might govern targeted killings. If human rights law and domestic law enforcement procedures govern these killings, the duty to attempt capture prior to lethal force represents a cardinal rule that is systematically violated by these operations. On the other hand, if the Law of War applies then the duty to capture is fundamentally inconsistent with the summary killing already sanctioned by jus in bello. The following Article examines the duty to capture and the divergent approaches that each legal regime takes to this normative requirement, and …


The One Or The Many, Jens David Ohlin Dec 2014

The One Or The Many, Jens David Ohlin

Jens David Ohlin

The following Review Essay, inspired by Tracy Isaacs’ new book, Moral Responsibility in Collective Contexts, connects the philosophical literature on group agency with recent trends in international criminal law. Part I of the Essay sketches out the relevant philosophical positions, including collectivist and individualist accounts of group agency. Particular attention is paid to Kornhauser and Sager’s development of the doctrinal paradox, Philip Pettit’s deployment of the paradox towards a general argument for group rationality, and Michael Bratman’s account of shared or joint intentions. Part II then analyzes, with cautious support, Isaacs’ two-level solution, which entails both individual and collective moral …


Meta-Theory Of International Criminal Procedure: Vindicating The Rule Of Law, Jens David Ohlin Dec 2014

Meta-Theory Of International Criminal Procedure: Vindicating The Rule Of Law, Jens David Ohlin

Jens David Ohlin

International criminal procedure is in a second phase of development, moving beyond the common law/civil law dichotomy and searching for its sui generis theory. The standard line is that international criminal procedure has an instrumental value: it services the general goals of international criminal justice and allows punishment for violations of substantive international criminal law. However, international criminal procedure also has an important and often overlooked intrinsic value not reducible to its instrumental value: it vindicates the Rule of Law. This vindication is performed by adjudicating allegations of criminal violations that occurred during periods of anarchy characterized by the absence …